Deletion -- 620, 630 Asynchronous Program Presentations & Views

[VTLIB1]

Name:
Joshua Muse

State/Affiliation:
Vermont Department of Libraries

Description of Change:
Delete data element #620 Total Number of Asynchronous Program Presentations and #630 Total Plays of Asynchronous Program Presentation within 30 Days

Current Definition:
620 Total Number of Asynchronous Program Presentations (TOTPRES)
Asynchronous program presentations are recorded videos or audio of program content that are posted online for downloading or on-demand viewing (rather than livestreaming). Only include program presentations posted during the reporting period. Include live program sessions that are recorded and posted online. Count each unique video or audio recording only once regardless of the number of platforms on which it is posted. Do not duplicate numbers at each branch; count only at the administrative entity level.

630 Total Plays of Asynchronous Program Presentation within 30 Days (TOTVIEWS)
Report the count of views or plays of asynchronous program presentations for a period of thirty (30) days after the presentation was posted, even if that period extends beyond the survey reporting period (or fiscal year). For program presentations made available via Facebook, count unique 1-minute views of each video. For other platforms, count unique views or plays of each video or audio recording.

Justification:
I am suggesting deleting both Asynchronous Presentations and Plays, rather than moving those numbers elsewhere. It seems like these were "credit" questions, forged in the darkest moments of the Pandemic in a mildly desperate attempt to illustrate what libraries were still accomplishing, and it feels like their time may have passed (fingers crossed). I think #620 and (especially) #630 are high effort (both burden and technical challenge) and low reward (data is inconsistent, and what do we learn?). Asynchronous was always a bit of a strange duck, like virtual programming but...less. My state could be a real small/rural outlier, but for 2023 we only had 15 of 146 libraries report any asynchronous activity at all.

Potential methodological issues:
Loss of asynchronous data, particularly over time.

[BAAugspurger]

Good morning - new to SDC position in KY so getting up to speed on this issue. I was approached about the uselessness of Asynchronous 30-day timeframe viewing counts. Their suggestion was to make reporting Asynchronous viewing counts for the FY cycle. Food for thought :-)

[VTLIB1]

Hi, Bobbi, and thanks for posting here! I think we (collectively) struggled with the time period for views, to some degree thinking that all of the options were varying degrees of bad. We started with 7 days, thinking that most views would happen in that immediate period, before deciding that 30 days might be more logical. There were definitely discussions about counting for the entire reporting period, but (and folks can correct me) I think we were at least partially concerned with the idea that an August recording (early in the reporting period) would on-average count for more than a May recording (late in the reporting period). Further, watching a program at a longer remove felt even less and less like the core idea of synchronous programming.
Ultimately, counting views for each program seemed kind of laborious no matter what the window was, so nothing felt like a huge improvement.

Again, that's just my recollection/take! Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

Thanks,
Josh

[enielsen-air]

I recall a recent discussion on the SDC Forum about Facebook changing their engagement metrics which will make it nearly impossible to report these view counts in the future. My concern is that as platforms (especially general purpose platforms that are not specific to libraries) continue to change their metrics we're going to end up in a situation like "Successful Retrievals of Electronic Information" where we have a combination of numbers that are so different that the total is meaningless.

[angelakfox]

Josh, I think you're exactly right to say these feel like they evolved as a sort of "credit" question. I feel like "asynchronous program presentations" was added largely to provide libraries a place to dump these numbers during the height of COVID so that they did not add them to the traditional programming metrics - desperate as they were to keep programming numbers up and to get credit for their hard work. With live programming resuming pre-pandemic levels and asynchronous numbers plummeting off a cliff in recent years, I think these these two elements have served their purpose and can be deleted.

[nrgieske]

I agree with removing them.